Napkins drawn by Nina Levy for her 13 and 9 year old sons.
Daily for 10 years. Now that the kids eat in the school cafeteria:
merely regularly.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Manly Easter Bunny

Can a rabbit than delivers pastel eggs to your home be masculine in appearance without being creepy?

I should preface my comments on this napkin with the exculpatory information that I didn't even get started on it until after midnight, when any normal person who has to get up at six would have gone to bed. I got a late start on the evening after spending a ridiculous amount of time looking for a cell phone on which I had stupidly turned off the ringer and then idiotically left it in the sleeping kids' dark bedroom.

Absent an official request from Ansel last night, I thought (not that my thoughts were at all coherent at that point) that something Easter themed would be nice.

As a child myself, I never really believed in Santa, the tooth fairy or the other standard childhood holiday characters, but I was not quite sure about the existence of the Easter Bunny for perhaps longer than I should have been.

I think this might have had something to do with an early sighting of an adult in a bunny costume at some sort of Chicago department store. And it might have had something to do with my parents pushing the idea. At our house, the Bunny was definitely not associated with any religion beyond the love of candy, and was compellingly described by my parents as being so tall that his ears "just brushed the top of the door jamb as he passed through." For unknown reasons, I always pictured him as being blue and wearing some items of clothing, like a vest and a bow tie.

I admit I have described my childhood questions about the existence of said Bunny to my own kids in a sort of "hey, you never know" fashion. We have had Easter egg hunts where the Bunny leaves them a note which is obviously in their mother's handwriting. "Perhaps he sends me an email and tells me what to write?" I have pathetically suggested.

In short, they have never been fooled... or particularly amused.

When I started thinking, for 45 seconds straight at least, about drawing this Bunny that I had imagined in my childhood and described to my sons, I realized he was just not going to be cool, or masculine, enough for my younger son.

Attempts to make him more of a cool guy were, like my bizarre spin on the Tooth Fairy, mostly disturbing. Ansel humored me by taking the napkin to school, but I am sure there were plenty of disclaimers issued at lunch.